I've never been too into the whole "supernatural romance" genre in anime and other media, but I've known about Sola for a while and I've always been interested in it, I just never took the time to watch it. Also, I watched the first episode with my best friend who didn't end up watching beyond that and didn't really like that much either.
But I did.
There was something about the first episode, and the concept of Sola in general, that really grabbed my attention, to my utter confusion. Now that I finished the show (by binging no less!) I've realized that there's really nothing that special about Sola.
The pacing is slow, the art isn't that great, the story is blah, and the characters are kind of annoying. But somehow, all those mediocre factors work together to make this an enjoyable show. You need to look at this work as a whole to be able to appreciate it.
The story, though plot hole-y and slow, played out nicely throughout the whole series. My one qualm would be that the mood was all over the place at times. The story starts out very slowly and speeds up for just a little bit, then goes into this slice of life type thing but with the required supernatural-romance quirks. Then all of a sudden, all these plot twists are thrown into the mix, even though they're still trying to maintain the quirky slice of life tone. Even still, the story was interesting, despite being hard to follow at times. Sola also falls under the category of heartwarming and tugs at your heart strings (I actually teared up a couple times while watching it whoopsies).
I'm a sucker for good character development, but this show had very little (though I wasn't expecting it to). Our protagonist Yorito is a boy with his head stuck in the clouds and his face always behind a camera. Honestly, I liked this little thing about Yorito. His obsession with the sky was cute and was one of the likable factors of him. Our female protagonist, Matsuri, has these weird quirks about her that are kind of annoying, but sort of become endearing (Tomato bean juice). I suppose the character who goes through the most growth is Aono, Yorito's sister, but I can't really say without spoilers. I think my favorite character was probably Yorito's best friend Mana, who also had development in some way. I just liked that she was happy, and genuinely cared for her friends. She and her little sister Koyori lightened the story in a cute way.
The thing that stood out the most for me in Sola was the music. The OP, ED, insert song and the score were all beautiful and added to the whole feel of the series. The art is probably my least favorite thing about this series. Even though the scenery was pretty, the character art was... meh. There were quite a few wonky looking faces, and each character at least once had what I call "the dorito chin". Seriously, at times I wanted to pause and see if I could find the angle measure of Yorito's chin...
Overall, I liked this series. As I said, it's nothing special; it's not anything you haven't seen before. But it's a sweet story that's worth a watch, if you can get past plot holes, sporadic pace changes and (at times) cringe worthy art.
Also this is my first review so sorry for any mistakes I made or just overall mediocrity. uvu;;
